


Feign & Famish + Salt & Soothe

by berlitzschen



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Anorexia, Cutting, Gen, Self-Harm, Stay Safe Guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 03:31:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12312918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlitzschen/pseuds/berlitzschen
Summary: I can't finish these because they make me too triggered.





	Feign & Famish + Salt & Soothe

Feign & Famish

 

Signs aren’t always understood. Especially not when the subject involved does not fit the typical archetype generally associated with the illness. It was his age, they would say, in reference to his multiple layers regardless of season. He was a man, they would say, when someone pried into his eating habits. He could take care of himself, they would say, when he refused to eat meals with the family.

And it was rare that someone considered him or his state.

Rick couldn’t remember the day food became a source of conflict for him. When the aroma of boiled potatoes seasoned in garlic salt and butter made him dizzy and dry-heave. The time he found himself taking one bite out of a slice of pizza and then abandoning the entire meal. How drinking most anything made his gut coil and clench. 

He thought it started sometime around his fifth year. It waned and waxed to various degrees throughout his life, but it never relented. 

He was in his sixties and weighed less than his grandson.

Rick sighed as he slipped on his pants. They hung loosely from his hips. When he'd bought them six years ago they fit properly. Two years ago he bought the belt he had now. It was leather, chestnut, and had five notches.

He threaded it through the belt loops and recalled how when he had first gotten it he kept it on the first notch. Now though, it easily fastened to the fourth tightest notch. He looked at himself in the mirror and sighed. He'd have to buy a new set of pants soon. Though held up by the belt, all the extra fabric made it look like he was drowning in his trousers. 

He was thankful his heritage helped his skin hide the paleness his vitamin D deficiency caused. His age made his hair loss and breakage normal. Old people just became more brittle. If someone tried, they could probably snap his wrist. 

There were times when Rick’s heart arrhythmiated. The lack of vitamins and minerals in his body caused a chemical and electrical imbalance in his heart. Technically it was what made anorexia the mental illness with the most fatalities. 

To compensate for this, Rick took a multivitamin. It had the six essential minerals, plus a host of vitamins in the 1000% and 2000% dosage of the daily recommended value. It kept his heart from suddenly dropping out of rhythm, and it gave his hair and skin some respite against his mistreatment. But it didn't help the light-headedness and weight loss. 

Rick turned to the side and examined the dip in his ribs. His skin stretched taut over his sternum and his ribs and hip bones protruded ghastly from his torso. He pulled on a tank top, one of his favorite, thick and satiny blue sweaters, and shrugged on his lab coat. All the layers helped keep his body warm, as he didn't have the calories necessary to regulate his body temperature. They also bulked up his form into something more or less normal. 

It was summer and still he awoke each morning wracked with shivers. He slept with two blankets each night but still never felt warm. He considered plugging in the space heater again but eventually refused.

He drank from his flask as he headed into the kitchen. Uselessly, he hoped Beth hadn't made breakfast this morning. He hadn't even turned the corner and he heard the sizzling of bacon and smelled the sticky, saccharine scent of syrup. His stomach lurched and he grimaced around the mouth of his flask. 

“Hi, dad,” Beth greeted, smile full and pleasant. 

“Hi, sweetie,” Rick said and forced the corner of his mouth up. 

“I made your favorite this morning. Pancakes and bacon.” Beth said as she set the plate stacked high with hot cakes on the table. 

Rick grimaced, ”thanks.” 

\--

Salt & Soothe

Signs aren't always understood. They can be unusual ones, or even obvious ones, normalized and ignored against their surroundings. Distancing regarded as “just a teenage thing” when it is in fact a symptom of something far more complex and debilitating. Chronic sleepiness brushed off as “up all night again on the damn phone” when in truth the nights are filled with unrest and insidious thoughts. Sudden absence of smiles acknowledged but not commented upon, not when the a thousand other things were worth more consideration. 

These were the typical signs. 

The untypical one was when the salt in the house disappeared. 

“How’d we run out of salt?” Beth asked one evening at dinner, on her knees, digging into the deep recesses of the cabinet. “I swear we had a whole thing of it back here.”

Jerry replied something unhelpful. Summer didn’t consider it worth responding. Morty tensed for a moment and then slammed the last of his milk down. As he stood up and set his plate in the dishwasher he didn’t notice his grandfather watching him.

Easily excusing himself from his family, Morty slipped up the stairs and grabbed a small box from his room and a set of night clothes. Tucking it between the boxers and the shirt, Morty padded into the bathroom and locked the door. 

He plugged the sink drain and filled the basin with hot water. Ghostly tendrils of steam unfurled and fogged up the chrome faucet. He set the new clothes on the vanity and pulled the box out on top. Stripping his clothes and folding them on the closed toilet lid, Morty moved methodically. His actions were practiced and familiar, as evidenced by the scars crisscrossing his upper-thighs. 

The older ones were white and the deepest cuts had smooth, young scar tissue bridging the gaps where he’d sliced away his old flesh. Against the old skin, the scars held a map of pain, embroidered into the tissue’s memory. There were newer ones, too, no longer scabbed, but still far from losing their inflamed color. 

The newest ones were only four weeks old. Their ache faded long ago and after two weeks Morty could no longer coax flares of pain by digging his fingers into them. 

Morty opened the box. It held a pocket knife, a bottle of salt, and a ratty old rag. He placed the rag into the water and let it sit, absorbing the heat while he set everything else up. He ran the shower as cover, set the container of salt on the counter, and flipped open his knife. 

It was a simple stainless blade with a folding, black handle. He’d found it on the outskirts of the school grounds one day and decided it would belong to him from then on. It was on good condition, if a little dull. He sharpened it on the block his mom kept around for her kitchen knives and it worked just as well. The blade itself was about five inches long, with a single sharpened edge. As it terminated into the handle, the slightly curved edge fractioned off into pointed, serrated edges.

Though they sliced more abrasively, they penetrated far deeper, with a thicker, less bearable pain. And the amount of blood they elicited was pleasing. The more blood, the wider the fissure, the more accomplished he felt.

Wringing the cloth out and only slightly flinching at the way it burned his hands, Morty set it on the edge of the sink and heated the blade for thirty seconds in the same water. He gently shook the droplets of water off and selected an expanse of flesh he hadn’t previously conquested. 

It was the inner part of his thigh, with tender fat just beneath the skin. It would sting more than the tougher muscle that ran along his outer thighs, but Morty was eager to mar as much pristine flesh as he could get away with. Cutting into a virgin section of his flesh was always more satisfying than going over the same area already decorated by his knife. 

Pressing the blade against his skin, he looked away as he applied pressure and pulled. Quickly, he switched hands and repeated the same movement on his left thigh. He used more pressure, knowing it would be hard to compensate for how much weaker his left hand was compared to his right. No matter how much he tried, the cuts made with his left hand would always be weaker than those wrung with his right. 

He tossed the knife back into the sink, wanting the blade to retain warmth, and grabbed the cloth. The hot rag heated his skin and stung as the rivulets of water seeped into his exposed flesh. He twisted roughly, separating the edges of exposed flesh and inhibiting scabbing. 

He couldn’t let the wounds close, not yet.

He repeated the same process five more times, until his legs were twitching in protest. One cut on the right, then the left, and mopping the blood up—it wouldn’t do if he made a mess—and rubbing the cloth into the cuts, drawing even more blood and worsening the overall cut. His scars were always bigger when he did this process. After the pain, after the week it took for the cuts to stop throbbing, the scars that were left behind made him bubble with pride. It was like proof of all that he could withstand. 

Each lashing across his thighs made something filthy and knotted tight in his chest ease. It's what he imagined confession must felt like for Christians. Bloodletting allowed him to release some of the anxiety from his system. The less in control he felt, the more his fingers twitched and his skin ached. The tension got unbearable some nights. He 

As he dunk the rag in it spilled crimson and discolored the water to a pinkish hue. The stink of iron invaded his skull and made his stomach flutter. He wrung the cloth out one last time and rapidly twisted it against his skin. Morty tossed it into the sink, grabbed the salt container, and stepped into the shower. He maneuvered himself into the space the shower head wasn’t pelting with water. 

Working fast before they closed, Morty poured a handful of salt into his palm and lightly pressed it against his inner thigh. The granules clung to his wet and bleeding skin. He spread it around the cuts, his palm and the salt staining red. Then he took two fingers and pressed up and down the length of each cut over and over again. The salt dug in and pain flared up his thighs. It felt like someone had taken a hot iron to his skin. Even as he took his fingers away, the burning did not subside. In fact, the lack of pressure actually made the wounds smart worse.   
By the time he duplicated the process with the other thigh, both his legs were quivering. He carefully sat down in the shower, making sure the stream of water wouldn’t wash away the best part of the process. 

Morty laid there, his legs throbbing, until the water temperature cooled so much steam no longer fogged the glass. 

As he stood, he bent his knees and clung to the ledge, not trusting himself to stand. He washed the salt down the drain, cringing at the icy water teased the granules out of his cuts. He shut the water off and examined his thighs. Both cleaned and clotted by the salt, they only dripped clear droplets now. Gingerly, he stepped out of the tub, almost pitching forward as he was forced to put all his weight on the forward leg. He patted himself dry, paid close attention to his cuts, and slipped his clothes on.

He had to clench the waistband away from his inner thighs to minimize discomfort. The presence of fabric sliding over such fresh wounds had then flaring in pain, but Morty long ago refused to cover them with bandages, too afraid the medicine in them would lessen scar formation.


End file.
